Sweet and Spicy, With a Touch of Complex

First, we had Square Mile’s Sweetshop espresso. Pulled as a shot, it really sent our palettes on a ride through a candy store of sweet flavors. In milk, the funky sweetness became much more balanced and took on a bright caramel character.

The Klatch Ethiopian Kochere greatly contrasted Madcap’s Ethiopian Yukro. The Yukro tasted bright and spicy with herbal tea notes, while the Kochere was undeniably fruity, complex and naturally sweet with quite the enjoyable lingering pomegranate aftertaste. We brewed both filter coffees using a variety of manual methods. The crowd favorite seemed to be the Klatch brewed on the v60, which allowed us to best capture the complexity of the coffee without compromising any of the wonderful individual flavors.

Photo by Sharon Cho

We have a very exciting meeting in store for this week. We will be focusing on Scandinavian coffee and will be featuring coffee from Drop Coffee, a Stockholm based roaster and Tim Wendelboe, an Oslo based micro-roaster. Scandinavian roasters are known for roasting their coffees incredibly light, although some variation exists. They aim to highlight, rather than mask, the natural flavors in the high-quality raw green coffee that they individually source. This extremely light style of roast results in coffee that is naturally sweet, juicy, citrusy, floral and not bitter in any sense of the word. We are especially interested in drinking and discussing Scandinavian coffee because it allows us to enjoy a new range of flavors that are not found in darker roasts.

Photo by Sharon Cho

We hope you can drop by this Friday any time between 3-5 pm in the New Hampshire hall lounge. Stay for as long or as little as you like and rest assured that you will leave happy and caffeinated. And who knows, you just might meet a new friend or two!